Let me turn your organization into a Growth Brand.

I’ve held senior strategic roles at multiple creative agencies and organizations, and am a veteran of hundreds of innovative efforts. By bringing together experience and study in all forms of strategy — brand, marketing, experience, innovation, content —I’ve learned how to unlock the true value of Brand as key to an organization’s winning business strategy. Brand is not what you think. This new point of view will drive massive change within your organization — including how you produce continuous innovation, inventive communication, and engaging experiences.

CV

Core Competencies

  • Team Leadership

  • Product/Innovation Strategy

  • Unique Brand Experiences

  • Editorial/Copywriting

  • Business Development

  • Interviewing, Ethnographic Research

  • Data + Positioning Analysis

  • Behavioral Science 

  • HCD, Service Design

  • Workshop Facilitation

  • Presentations + Narrative

Professional Experience

Principal Brand Strategist │ frog/Idean (Capgemini) │ San Francisco, CA │ March 2018 – September 2022

  • Hired to ensure design work enabled clients to grow their business, increase revenue, and reduce costs.

    • Advised Amazon on building brand equity and accelerating customer adoption for personal care innovation in $1b+ product category.

    • Showed Honda Design Group how to grow market awareness through product in anticipated $28 billion category.

    • Performed potential-market analysis in a $238 billion category for a major EU telecom organization’s home entertainment device prototype.

    • Developed a strategic approach for AT&T to build unique brand experiences for a consumer product targeting a $6 billion-and-growing rural broadband market.

    • Uncovered customer experience opportunities for Penske to better compete against market-leader U-Haul.

Brand Consultant │ Self-Employed│ San Francisco, CA │ October 2014 - Current

  • Retained by creative studios and organizations to bring instant impact to experience, innovation, and brand challenges experienced by clients. 

    • Identified opportunities to drive revenue increases (up to 20%) and reduce costs (up to 30%) through digital transformation of Wells Fargo banker-teller tools. 

    • Created for IDEO an experience innovation strategy to generate new audiences and record retail sales for Nike superstore of the future.

    • Leveraged data and positioning analysis to accelerate customer adoption for market-defining products in biotech, fintech, health and wellness.

Senior Strategist │ John McNeil Studio │ Berkeley, CA │ April 2016 – July 2017

  • Recruited to enable clients to accelerate customer adoption, increase customer retention, and capture increased revenue.

    • Coaxed incoming college freshmen into revealing how Microsoft can best market Surface to them.

    • Built enterprise software firm CA Technologies into a brand acquired for $18 billion.

Head of Strategy│Dial House│ San Francisco, CA │ March 2010 – September 2014

  • Mandated to increase client retention and revenue by producing compelling marketing research and strategy for clients that reflected the studio’s “maverick” approach. 

    • Uncovered product and service innovation opportunities for Audi to grow audience and build loyalty.

    • Built brand awareness and led signature product innovation effort for Nokia’s new B2C navigation division (later acquired for $2.9 billion).

    • Concepted Cadbury product to rival the US’s most popular candy (at $600 million per year in revenue).

    • Leveraged ethnography of the barbecue social occasion to grow business for Kingsford.

    • Unlocked secret appeal of Burt’s Bees lip balm to drive further product innovation while growing brand equity. 

 

Media Specialist│Innovative Leadership │ San Francisco Bay Area, CA │ August 2000 – September 2010

  • Hired to deliver innovative approaches to editorial and communications in order to grow audience and build advertising revenue. Roles included: 

    • Executive Editor, Travel + Food, Sunset Magazine.

    • Senior Editor, Technology, The Industry Standard.

    • Content Designer, Booyah (social-location-mobile app).

    • Editorial Director, eHow.

    • Editorial Director (interim), TV.com, CBS Interactive.

    • Senior Associate Editor, Parenting. 

Education

Bachelor of Arts, Communications, emphasis in Journalism │ California State University, Chico